And by my side, in battle true, A thousand warriors drew the shaft? The desert serpent dwells alone, Where grass o'ergrows each mouldering bone, Then seek we not their camp,—for there The silence dwells of my despair! XXXIX. “But hark, the trump!-to-morrow thou Because I may not stain with grief WYOMING.* BY FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. "Dites si la Nature n'a pas fait ce beau pays pour une Julie, pour une Claire, et pour un St. Preux, mais ne les y cherchez pas." ROUSSEAU. I. THOU Com'st, in beauty, on my gaze at last, I breathed, in fancy, 'neath thy cloudless skies, II. I then but dreamed: thou art before me now, In life, a vision of the brain no more. * The allusion in the following stanzas can be understood by those only who have read Campbell's beautiful poem, "GERTRUDE OF WYOMING :" but who has not read it? I've stood upon the wooded mountain's brow, And now, where winds thy river's greenest shore, And winds, as soft and sweet as ever bore The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade, Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head. III. Nature hath made thee lovelier than the power With more of truth, and made each rock and tree In the dark legends of thy border war, With woes of deeper tint than his own Gertrude's are. IV. But where are they, the beings of the mind, We need not ask. The people of to-day And hospitable too-for ready pay; With manners like their roads, a little rough, And hands whose grasp is warm and welcoming, though tough. Judge V. who keeps the toll-bridge gate, And the town records, is the Albert now Of Wyoming like him, in church and state, The thin hairs, white with seventy winters' snow, VI. For he would look particularly droll In his "Iberian boot" and "Spanish plume," As of the birds that scare-crow and his broom. Hath many a model here; for woman's eye, In court or cottage, wheresoe'er her home, VII. There's one in the next field—of sweet sixteen— Singing and summoning thoughts of beauty born In heaven with her jacket of light green, "Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn,' Without a shoe or stocking-hoeing corn. Whether, like Gertrude, she oft wanders there, With Shakspeare's volume in her bosom borne, I think is doubtful. Of the poet-player The maiden knows no more than Cobbett or Voltaire. VIII. There is a woman, widowed, gray, and old, Who tells you where the foot of Battle stepped Upon their day of massacre. She told Its tale, and pointed to the spot, and wept, Whereon her father and five brothers slept Shroudless, the bright-dreamed slumbers of the brave, When all the land a funeral mourning kept. And there, wild laurels planted on the grave By Nature's hand, in air their pale red blossoms wave. |